August 15, 2009

Tradition

Unlike most people, I kind of enjoyed high school. Of course, I complained about it most of the time and I did not appreciate getting up at 5:45 AM. But, overall, I didn't mind it. Hell, most of the time I liked it!

One reason was playing varsity soccer. We weren't very good, but we worked hard and we shared some great memories. One of which was initiation. The tradition was that every year the upperclassmen would wake up the rookies at their homes one morning before school started. The rookies would be given 1 minute to get their school stuff ready and then blindfolded and piled into a car. The girls who had cars would split up and take the rest of the non-rookies so everyone was involved. We met at the Mickey D's across the street from our school, where the upperclassmen would dress up the rookies in ridiculous clothes, paint their faces, and concoct some fabulous up-do that generally involved massive amounts of gel, hairspray, and hair ties.

We looked something like this.

We'd get breakfast then drive over to the school to parade the girls around the school before classes. They were then expected to wear their outfits the rest of the day. When I was a freshman, we were given a card to get all of the girls' and boys' soccer teams' signatures after we did some soccer move in the hall. After the school day and practice, we were (finally) allowed to shower and then took part in a great team slumber party.

Little details changed over the years but the gist remained the same. This ritual was a way to initiate the rookies into the team. I truly believe it brought us closer and made us prouder to be a part of such a tight group of girls.

The seniors were in charge of organizing everything from dates, rides, "outfits" and even those awful wife-beaters we were to wear all day.

Look familiar?

This adorable sketch made an appearance on the lower backside of my tank top when I was a rookie. I think the curly hairs give it... character?

The complete backside

I'm still not entirely sure what this means...

CLASSY. Bob used to be my nickname, BTW.

And the uniform wouldn't be complete without some well-placed armpit hair. I didn't realize it was there until I was saying the Pledge of Allegiance in homeroom when one of my classmates pointed out my lack of shaving.